


Sourcery, As Seen From The Ground

by Omicheese



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Book: Sourcery (Discworld), Gen, The Apocralypse, assorted cameos from all across Ankh-Morpork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23491471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omicheese/pseuds/Omicheese
Summary: The Patrician was missing and the world was ending.That HAD to be a crime, right?(Essentially: how did the people of Ankh-Morpork deal with the events ofSourcery?)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	Sourcery, As Seen From The Ground

**Author's Note:**

> I got around to reading _Sourcery_ only after reading all of the Watch books, Lipwig books, _The Truth_ , and also _Reaper Man_ , so naturally I spent the whole time wondering what was happening to all of the characters we meet and love in later books. That generated this. _Sourcery_ was set some ten years before _Guards! Guards!_ and _Reaper Man_ , so it was also fun trying to imagine was things were like for most folks around then.

The evening had just begun, and Sergeant Sam Vimes had just woken up. He was in the main office of the Watchhouse, yes, but that didn’t mean he was _there_ , not yet. He sipped at his Bearhuggers whiskey the way morning commuters sipped at their coffee. He would face the night only _after_ the cup was empty.

The office seemed unusually busy for this time of… ever. Everyone seemed to have conveniently forgotten that the Night Watch existed these days, so their visitors and complainants were few and far between. It kept things easy to deal with, at least. But right now it sounded like there was some kind of argument.

“Look,” one of the voices was saying. Relatively new to the Watch, considering the next newest watchman was Nobby.* What was his name? Lance-Constable Shirt? “Whatever you’re up to’s got nowt to do with us, so why don’t you just shove off?”

_*No one could remember exactly when Constable Nobby Nobbs had joined the Watch, though presumably he must have officially done so at some point. He was like the skin tag on your neck that’s ‘always been there.’_

“The _nerve!_ ” Now that voice Vimes could place, not that it made him feel much better. Reg Shoe was annoying even at the best of times, and the fact that he was a zombie definitely didn’t help him make any friends. The undead had always given Vimes the creeps, even the comparatively harmless ones like Reg. Normal people stayed down when they were killed. “I laid down my _life_ for this city—”

“And picked it back up again,” the lance-constable sniggered.

“Oi!” Sergeant Colon had just come in. Colon didn’t hold truck with foreigners of any variety, but he never seemed to have as much of a problem with the undead as Vimes did. He could handle this himself, then. “We don’t joke about that ‘round here. Reg Shoe is a right patriot, he is. Hi, Reg. What is it now?”

“Hi, Fred. I need to report a missing person.”

“And who seems to be missing?”

“The Patrician.”

Vimes nearly choked on his whiskey. He spluttered, “What?”

“I went to the Palace today to have a discussion, and he wasn’t there!” Reg had ‘discussions’ at the Palace quite frequently. He was the sort of person who always had something to complain about, and believed that such feelings were meant to be shared. During the previous Patrician’s reign, the palace guards used to cut Reg’s head off and throw it as far as they could to make him go away, but Lord Vetinari didn’t seem to mind the intrusion as much. After a few more years in office, he probably would, though. Mad Lord Snapcase had had to deal with nearly two decades of Reg Shoe—Vetinari was just getting started. “Not in the chair by the throne _or_ the Oblong Office! And he’s almost _always_ in one or the other, 24/8. Something must have happened to him!”

“Haven’t you asked the Day Watch?” Maybe Vimes would get lucky and this could be someone else’s problem.

Reg pulled a face. “They won’t talk to me at the Day Watch. Some rubbish about the undead being ‘creatures of the night with no business out in the gods’ daylight.’ It’s terribly insensitive! They’re charged with protecting the city, but they’re determined to concern themselves only with a small proportion of the inhabitants—”

“ _Reg._ ”

“You’re all I’ve got.” He slumped. “You’re the only people in this whole city who will listen to me. Everyone else throws me out before I can even get a word in. Please.”

It was hard to ignore a ‘please.’ Not when the whole sentence was ‘Please.’ A good man would act on that. Vimes had been a good man once, or at least he’d aspired to be one. But being a good man required maintenance, and maintenance was hard to afford over the years. “Finding a missing Patrician sounds a little above our pay grade, is the thing.”

“But it has to be some kind of crime! No one at the Palace seems to know where he is! And with all of this nonsense going on at the University, the city needs him!”

“Still…”

“And anyway, it’s _Vetinari._ I know he’s the Patrician now, and a lord, and a tyrant, and whatever happened to Truth and Justice, but he’s still a comrade! He wears the lilac! We can’t just ignore our brother’s suffering!”

Vimes stiffened.

Reg at least had the decency to look sorry. He always looked so _sorry_ whenever it came up. That was almost worse. “I know they’re painful memories for you—”

“Stop.” Vimes heard himself say it, rather than actually having intended to say anything. “Just… stop. Fine. We’ll look for him, okay? We’ll do our job. You just go back to doing… whatever it is you normally do.”

Reg smiled, showing teeth that had gone brown years ago. “Thank you so much! It’s such a relief to know that the case is in good hands.”

Good hands. Vimes fought the urge to roll his eyes. Reg had never settled into that natural cynicism that came with age, because he’d died when he was only 22 years old. The rest of them had to live in this world. But Vimes had already said he’d look into it, so… “Did you actually go into the Oblong Office? What did it look like?”

“I did go in, though the guards told me not to. The door was locked from the inside, so I had to break the doorknob off.” Reg shrugged, as though casual destruction of property meant nothing to him. Maybe it didn’t—who knew what mattered to the already dead? A door locked from the inside sounded like an important detail, though. Vetinari couldn’t have left that way, and he wouldn’t have been expecting visitors. “But aside from the damage I caused, there was no other sign of struggle. The papers on his desk hadn’t been disturbed, still stacked very carefully, with about as many papers in the In tray as the Out tray. Nothing there that shouldn’t have been there, as far as I could tell. But there was something strange.”

Vimes had to admit he was surprised. This was a good description of a crime scene. He knew that Reg was a nitpicker, but he hadn’t really expected that to carry over into observation skills. “Something strange?”

“The dog wasn’t around either.”

“Wuffles?” Now that was strange. Vimes had seen Wuffles once and the dog was no spring chicken—he gave the impression that a simple jaunt around the garden to sniff trees and pass water might give him a heart attack. It was hard to imagine that he could have gotten far. “Hmm. Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of.”

But Vimes could hear the captain calling him upstairs for something. “Alright, Reg. If you do remember anything else, let us know.”

“Thank you again!”

“Vimes!” the captain shouted again, Vimes already halfway up the stairs. Vimes wasn’t the only sergeant left in the Night Watch, but everyone seemed to think he was the responsible one. That didn’t say much for officer quality.

“Sir?” he asked, opening the door to the captain’s office.

The captain was scowling. Uh oh. “Sergeant Vimes, exactly _what_ did you call Mr. Nicholas Filch of the Thieves Guild last night?”

“Oh.” Dammit. “Uh…”

And the entire matter of the Patrician vanished from his mind.

*

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of finest homemade meat pies and sausages-inna-bun, was a man of many talents. Cooking wasn’t one of them.* But knowing which way the wind was blowing was.

_*The best you could say of Dibbler’s wares is that they were edible, and even that might count as perjury in a court of law._

He hadn’t been in Sator Square personally, but he’d heard enough to know that things were not looking good in the sausage-inna-bun market. If the wizards could conjure pies from nothing, pies with actual meat in them moreover, there was no hope for Dibbler in this current line of business. He would need to find a new niche.

C.M.O.T. Dibbler was a salesman. And as long as there were people on this Disc, he would be there to shill his product, whatever that happened to be at the time.

He rolled his cart toward the Hubward Gate, taking care as he did so to write up a new sign to hang out front:

EMERGENCY RATIONS!  
CHEAP! NON-PERISHABLE!  
DON’T EVACUATE WITHOUT THEM!!

*

“So what’s all this about a sourceror, Fred?”

Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon sat at the bar at the Bucket in Gleam Street, well-known as the tavern of choice for off-duty coppers, or as many as were left these days. Vimes was with them as well, but he’d already drunk himself into a stupor for the day and was unavailable until duty called. They’d pull him up and wipe the drool off the counter on their way out, as a courtesy, but for now it was best to let him lie.

“Well, Nobby,” Colon took a swig of his drink, trying to think of the best way to sound intelligent while explaining a concept he himself only barely understood, “a sourceror is like a wizard, only extra.”

“How’s that, then?”

“Well, a wizard is the eighth son of an eighth son, right? That’s logic. Everyone knows that. So a sourceror is what you get when the eighth son of an eighth son has an eighth son.”

Nobby frowned, thinking this over. “I thought wizards couldn’t have kids?”

“Not supposed to, not supposed to,” Colon reassured him, confident at least in this knowledge. “But they technically could if they wanted to. And this is what you get.”

“I always thought they chopped off a wizard’s—”

“Even wizards have feelings, Nobby.”

Nobby nodded and sipped at his mug, following things so far. “So what’s the difference, then?”

“Hm? Er… Well. The number eight is the magickest of numbers, right? So with all them extra eights, a sourceror would be more magical than a wizard. Like…” Sergeant Colon tried and failed to do the mental maths, “like a lot more.”

“So like a wizard king?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Fancy that, Ankh-Morpork having a king again! That’d be a difference, and no mistake!”

“Don’t let Vimesy hear you say that,” Colon hissed, glancing Vimes’s way, “he’ll go spare. You know how he gets when folks just _mention._ ”

“So if this sourceror’s like a king,” Nobby went on in a quieter voice, figuring what Vimes couldn’t hear wouldn’t hurt him*, “he can do whatever he wants, then?” Ankh-Morpork hadn’t had a king in hundreds of years, but the belief in the power of monarchy had never completely died out.

_*I.e., what Vimes couldn’t hear wouldn’t hurt **Nobby.**_

“Well, he can’t do _whatever_ he wants, stands to reason.” Colon shook his head. “Not even the Patrician can do _whatever_ he wants. He wouldn’t get away with it.”

Nobby seemed at first to accept that, but then frowned and asked, “But Fred, what’s stopping him?”

*

Detritus the troll sat chained outside his new workplace, ready to splat whosoever the proprietor didn’t want to let in. It was a good job for a bachelor, by his reckoning. He’d never been able to hold one for very long. He had the skills, but not the sense. Splatting suited him just fine.

It was a very warm afternoon. Midsummer was only… uh… two days ago. There wasn’t much for Detritus to think about. 

There was a weird kind of shiver under his feet.

The grimy, lumpy granite cobbles in the road around him had suddenly been replaced with even, quarried setts, scrubbed clean.

Huh. That was weird.

Detritus went back to staring blankly down the alleyway.

*

Vimes awoke to an unfamiliar sight: morning.

He was sprawled out in the gutter. He must have passed out in the middle of his beat last night. How much had he drunk? It couldn’t have been _that_ much, could it…?

Stranger still, the street around him was completely empty. Ankh-Morpork was never what you’d call quiet, but by the time there was this much daylight, people should be going about their business already. Multiple thieves _should_ have come in the night and stripped Vimes of all his clothes and personal belongings by now. And yet he was the only one around, as though by waking up in the street he was the first to arrive on the scene.

Wizards, a niggling voice in the back of his brain tried to remind him. Something’s gotten into them. They’re not their bookish, own-business-minding selves anymore. They’ve gone off the chain. They’re breaching the peace. They’re endangering the public. They’re _conspiring._ Something has to be done.

Vimes didn’t have the authority to do anything about that. He was only a sergeant, and the captain had chewed him out for having his own ideas only the other day. Dealing with the University wasn’t Vimes’s problem, or even the captain’s problem—this was a Patrician-level problem.

But the Patrician was still missing.

Vimes shook his head and proceeded back to Treacle Mine Road. Maybe more whiskey would stop him worrying about it.

*

Sacharissa Cripslock (age 7), packed her dolls gently. Grandfather had told her to pack quickly and to take everything she needed, but she didn’t want them to be uncomfortable in the bag. Grandfather hadn’t said how long they would be gone.

A lot of very strange things had been happening lately, but the strangest thing of all was Grandfather’s insistence that they leave the city, and quickly. She tried to get him to explain, pestering him with question after question, but all he would say was, quote, “We don’t want to be here when that tower gets finished.”

So she tied on her cloak and picked up her bag, careful not to jostle it too much, and took her grandfather’s hand.

*

The worst part, Vimes thought, was that he knew better. He’d been _taught_ better. He’d been taught to be a _policeman._ What would his old sergeant think of him, if he could see Vimes now?

Ignorance caused its own problems, but knowing how to be a good copper and then _deliberately not doing it_ , well, that didn’t bear thinking about. Normally Vimes drank so that he wouldn’t have to think about it. Today’s sobriety was a rare and unusual circumstance. All the taverns Vimes knew had been magically scoured and turned into houses of good repute since the wizards took over, and he was running low on his personal supply.

So fine, dammit. He’d been told to keep his head down. He’d been told to stay out of politics. He’d been told to leave it all to the Day Watch, what with the weird, magical sleep knocking everyone out these past few nights. But this had gotten out of hand. He needed to know where the Patrician had gone.

The palace was completely empty. The guards had all run off days ago, well known as they were for their size rather than their loyalty. Reg Shoe had destroyed the door to the Oblong Office, but the scene still looked just as he’d described. No indication that anyone had come in or left, except for the fact that no one was there.

There was something Reg hadn’t mentioned, though: the _smell._ The fact that Reg had overlooked it was unsurprising—if zombies had a sense of smell when they woke up from whatever horrible death experience had put them in that situation, the stench of their own decaying bodies would certainly overpower anything else. But Vimes noticed.

He couldn’t exactly _describe_ the smell. If it smelled _like_ something, it was something with which Vimes was completely unfamiliar. But it was definitely, inescapably, there. It was as though the air in the Oblong Office was somehow greasy, clinging to his nose hairs as he breathed it in. And even if he couldn’t describe the smell, he knew he’d smelled it before. In fact, it was a smell he’d been smelling more and more of lately. Coming out of the University.

His old sergeant had told him no one was above the Law, but what was Vimes supposed to do when the kidnapper was a _wizard?_

*

Harry King was out of a job.

He had _never_ been out of a job, not since he started raking muck at the age of three. The very idea of not making money was antithetical to him. He could find value in _anything,_ and indeed had made his fortune doing just that.

But Ankh-Morpork was so _clean_ all of a sudden. None of his employees had been able to bring even a single bucket of shit back to the compound in _days._ Surely people were still going about their bodily functions! But these days, he’d swear, it was as though the streets were magically cleaning themselves.

He nearly spat out his cigar in his clerk’s face. “What do you _mean,_ ‘that’s basically what’s happening’?!”

*

Unseen University was completely unrecognizable. Not that Vimes had ever been in the habit of looking at it too closely, but he had certainly proceeded past it plenty of times while patrolling over the last fifteen years or so. He would never have known it was the same building now, if it hadn’t been at the same address.

It had somehow gotten _bigger,_ without occupying any more space. The old stone had all been turned into white, shining marble, completely unscuffed, and whatever wasn’t marble seemed to be made entirely of sparkling windows. Fountains, with real un-pissed-in water in them, splashed and burbled all about the place. Only the doors seemed unchanged, big and black and giving off an aura of foreboding.

Vimes hadn’t come alone—he wasn’t _that_ stupid. He’d dragged Lance-Constable Redd Shirt along with him, since Leggy Gaskin was getting over the flu. But it was Vimes who had to screw up his courage and knock.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, the door creaked open. A wizard leaned out. “What?” he demanded.

Vimes saluted, just in case. You never knew with wizards, and these days you knew even less. “Sergeant Samuel Vimes of the Night Watch, sir. We’re here to investigate a report of a missing person. May I ask you a few questions?”

The wizard scowled. “Leave.” Just ‘leave,’ as though they weren’t worth wasting more than a single syllable to dismiss.

“Well how d’you like that?” groused Lance-Constable Shirt, scowling right back. “This doorman really thinks he can—” but he didn’t get to finish that sentence. Smoking pairs of sandals seldom finished any sentences.

Vimes legged it out of there back to Treacle Mine Road as fast as he could.

*

All across the Disc, the werewolves of the world felt a very strange sensation, perhaps like the rug being yanked from under their paws, or perhaps like being spun around blindfolded before being pointed at the piñata. There was a noticeable _pull._

Suddenly, everyone’s schedules were off.

People who were only just getting over the hectic nature of the previous week, glad to have all the chicken-worrying and cart-chasing out of their systems, suddenly found themselves howling again. Several children without warning became puppies. A few rare puppies became children. Others grew hairier and toothier without a specific change in shape, but what they all had in common was a very bad evening and a sense that something had gone deeply wrong.

Reg Shoe looked up from the speech he was preparing and out the window of the mortuary, where he couldn’t be said to _live_ but did stay with the mortician’s permission. The night had become noticeably _brighter._ The phases of the moon weren’t particularly Reg’s business, not being that type of undead himself, but he would have sworn that it had been full only a week ago. What had those wizards done _now…?_

He stepped out to get a better look. Even Elm Street bordering the Shades had become eerily quiet at night these days, despite having rather nocturnal neighbors. Reg hadn’t seen a human awake after midnight for more than a week now, and most of the rest were minding their own business or had already taken their leave. It seemed even those who couldn’t completely die still had a sense of self-preservation.

A shadow passed in front of the moon. Reg peered up carefully. A zombie’s vision is a bit more acute than a human’s, no longer needing to rely on the actual functionality of the eyeball. In the darkness of the sky, he could make out the silhouette of a person, flying through the air on wings like a bat.

A bat would make sense. A cloud of bats or wisp of mist in a personish shape would make sense, Ankh-Morpork having a few local vampires. But this was very distinctly a man with wings, which grew more obvious the lower he swung.

He landed in the street, wrapped the wings around him like a leathery cloak, and opened his mouth to speak. “Oo—” But the sound stopped barely after he had managed the first syllable. “O- o- o-oooh,” he tried again, sputtering into nothing. The man frowned, and took a huge breath. He unhinged his jaw, revealing sharp teeth.

No sound came out at all this time. It was as though he was trying to scream, but couldn’t manage to get his vocal cords to rub together just right. He snapped his mouth shut and screwed his eyes closed, frustration visible all over his pale, thin face. It was hard to watch.

“Can you write?” Reg asked, offering him a pencil and bit of card that he kept in his pockets. He was always getting ideas for slogans and such, so it helped to keep writing materials at hand.

The man noticed Reg and nodded eagerly, taking the card and scribbling away. He handed it back. It read: “My name is Ixolite. I’m a banshee.”

“Oh, pleased to meet you!” Reg grinned and held out a hand. He had never met a banshee before, having heard somewhere that they’d gone extinct, but there was a first time for everything. “My name is Reg Shoe.”

Ixolite smiled and shook Reg’s hand, almost pulling it off by accident*, but quickly took the card back and started scribbling again.

_*Nothing that hadn’t happened to Reg before. His pockets also contained a pincushion and a lot of heavy-duty thread. Zombies, despite their superhuman strength, were not known for being especially durable, and Reg didn’t pay the best attention to his extremities anyway._

He handed Reg the card, looking apologetic. Reg read: “Everyone in this city is going to die soon.”

“Oh. Oh dear.”

*

_BANG_

Tolliver Groat stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. That had sounded like a firework.

_BANG BANG rumblerumblerumble…_

Mr. Tiddles, the Post Office Cat, skittered under Tolliver’s chair and hissed.

_RUMBLERUMBLERUMBLE BANG BANG RUMBLE_

Ah, a thunderstorm, then. Tolliver went back to putting sulphur in his socks.

*

Dorfl was working. No one had told him to stop.

He had noticed that the bangs were getting louder, the multicolored flashes of light brighter. He had noticed that all the other workers in the mill had fled screaming quite some time ago. He had noticed that the mill itself only seemed to retain its shape some of the time, morphing and warping, winking between architectural styles as though suddenly drawn by different artists.

He had heard them say that the world was ending.

But he kept working. No one had told him to stop.

Maybe if the world did end, he wouldn’t have to work anymore.

*

“They’re calling it the Apocralypse,” said Schleppel, hiding in the shadows under the mortuary’s front desk, as the mortician had skipped town that morning. “It’ll be the end of the world and everythin’.”

Reg Shoe stubbornly continued his work in spite of the noise and the shaking around them, pinning cards and little matchbooks to the insides of coffins. These read: “You Don’t Have To Take This Lying Down! Come to the FRESH START CLUB! Thursdays, 12pm, 668 Elm Street.” Reg was convinced that the only reason anyone stayed dead was because they didn’t know their options. “The whole world?” he scoffed. “I doubt it.”

“’S’ what they’re saying,” Schleppel said, shrugging anyway even though Reg couldn’t see him. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Reg—he quite liked him, actually, they’d been friends for a while now—but he hated being out in the open like that. It was in a bogeyman’s nature to hide and scare people, but Schleppel much preferred the hiding part. Under the desk was better. Especially in these circumstances. “And it sounds about right to me. A lot more magic building up everywhere than there’s supposed to be. Something’s gonna have to give. And that banshee did tell you that everyone was gonna die.”

“Ixolite, yes.” Reg frowned, unsticking a pin from one of his fingers and reaffixing the card to the coffin lid. “Though I have a hard time imagining what ‘dying’ would even be for some of us.”

Schleppel figured it was probably time to stop beating around the bush and just have out with it. “I’m thinking of hiding under the next cart headed out of town.”

Reg blinked and turned to look at the desk. “You’re leaving Ankh-Morpork?” he asked, sounding almost betrayed.

“You could come with me.”

“But—leave Ankh-Morpork? I _couldn’t!_ ” The stitches strained around Reg’s neck as he shook his head. “This is my home! Everything I’ve ever done has been for this city. It’s _my_ city. I couldn’t possibly leave!”

“Is it though?” Schleppel had to ask. “Still? Do you recognize anything anymore?”

In less than two weeks, the wizards had changed everything. Everything that had made Ankh-Morpork what it was had gone. The Patrician was nowhere to be found. The filthy streets were now sparkling. The crowds of noisy vendors had all abandoned ship. What thieves and muggers were left all minded their own business. The night life had gone silent as Reg’s empty grave. The River Ankh had lost its iconic smell and texture. Even the inside of this very mortuary was brighter and cleaner than it had ever been.

Reg’s face fell as he considered it all. But then he pulled himself together. “I recognize _you,_ ” he said. “And I recognize a lot of other people who haven’t left. I recognize the graves in Small Gods. There’s still something to fight for. I can’t leave. But I appreciate the offer.”

Schleppel had expected an answer like that. He wouldn’t be Reg Shoe if he gave up on anything. But at least Schleppel had tried. “Well, Reg,” he said, extending an enormous hairy arm out from under the desk to shake Reg’s hand, “if the world hasn’t ended by then, I’ll see you on Thursday.”

*

“I’m not just going to ring my little bell and say ‘All’s Well,’ sir!” snarled Vimes. “The city is under attack!”

“And what do you think _you’re_ going to do about it, Sergeant?”

“The Patrician—”

“The Patrician is probably dead!” the captain growled back, matching Vimes for volume. He was taller than Vimes was, and glared down at him. “The wizards did to him what they did to Shirt, and what they’re going to do to you if you keep on with all of this!”

“There was _nothing_ in that office, sir!” Vimes knew he was right. He’d be the first man to come forward and say that he didn’t like Vetinari, but he _knew_ the man was alive. And that meant he still needed to be found. “When they killed Shirt, they just left his sandals smoking in the street. Wizards never clean up their _own_ messes! There would have been evidence if they had—”

“Sergeant!” the captain barked. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but _I_ am in command of this Watch, and if you—”

There was an enormous crash as half the ceiling caved in. On the captain’s head.

The other watchmen stared.

Finally Sergeant Colon said, “Well, Sam, what do we do?”

Shit.

Vimes wasn’t his old sergeant. He didn’t know what to do in the middle of a war zone.

But maybe his old sergeant didn’t know, either. Maybe he was just doing whatever he could. The last of Vimes’s Bearhuggers whiskey was in a bottle in his pocket. He drained it and took a deep breath. “All right. Maroon, I want you and Leggy to head off down Short Street and work on evacuating anybody who’s left. Get them outside the gates. Whoever’s shooting these damn spells, they’re aiming for that tower, not the countryside. Curry, you and Scurrick do the same thing down Elm Street. Fred, you and Nobby cross the Brass Bridge, evacuate anybody still on the Ankh side. We’ve got to save as many people as we can.”

“But what about you, Sam?”

Vimes slumped the captain against the wall. It was better than just leaving him there. He wasn’t dead yet, at least. “I’m going to go deal with the source of the problem.”

*

“What do you mean, Seven-Handed Sek is _gone?_ ” asked Evadne Cake impatiently.

The duty priest looked at her with growing horror. He’d been warned about her from his friend who worked at the Temple of Blind Io. She’d been a perfectly kind and helpful woman thus far, but he’d heard strange stories… “Mrs. Cake, I don’t know what you’re talking about! Seven-Handed Sek is a _god,_ gods don’t just—”

But just then the high priestess burst into the hall, screaming, “Seven-Handed Sek is gone!”

“Well, certainly not run around screaming about it!” Mrs. Cake snapped.

“They’re all gone!” the priestess cried. “Whatever are we to do?”

*

“Are you barking mad?” Nobby goggled. “Go out to the University? _Now?_ ”

Colon gave Vimes a surreptitious sniff. He didn’t smell nearly drunk enough to come up with this kind of plan. “You sure you’re sure about this, Sam? What do you really think any of us can do about wizards?”

“I don’t know, but we have to do _something!_ This is _my_ city! I’m not just going to let them wreck the place!” Vimes’s feet were already marching him straight to the tower, still looming eerie white and untouched over everything. Wizard or sourceror or whatever the hell he was, whoever stood at the top of that tower had started all of this. He was the reason Vetinari was missing, the reason Sator Square was empty, the reason wizards were attacking _Vimes’s city,_ and by gods, Vimes was going to do something about it.

Colon kept trying ineffectually to pull him back. “You can’t just arrest the wizards, though!”

_“Watch me.”_

The spells seem to have stopped coming in, but an ominous wind had started to blow out from the Hub. That might have given him pause, but at this point Vimes was too sober and too angry to care. This had gone on long enough.

They reached the foot of the tower.

As Vimes looked for a way up, Nobby pulled a cosh from his pocket and weighed it carefully in his hands. If he hit hard enough, perhaps he could knock Sergeant Vimes out and help drag him away before he got himself killed. Of course, he wouldn’t get a second chance if he missed…

But then, in front of their very eyes, the tower began to turn transparent. It flickered like a flame, then suddenly was completely gone, as though it had never even been there.

Wizards, who had apparently been in the tower, began approaching the watchmen at terminal velocity.

Finally Vimes’s survival instincts kicked in. With one mind, he, Colon, and Nobby dived for cover as the bodies hit the ground.

The wind started to chill rapidly, as though blowing off ice. They huddled together, teeth chattering. The ground started to shake. There was noise everywhere, getting louder every moment. Maybe the world really was ending. Maybe—

Silence.

In a massive _WHOOSH,_ air as hot as the Klatchian Desert billowed in from the Rim with enough force to knock a man over. Vimes hit his head on the wall behind him—

*

The sun oozed in through the morning sky.

Samuel Vimes blinked up at the world.

“…What the hell just happened?”

*

Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs sat at a table in the nearly empty Mended Drum, drinking slowly and quietly, still trying to process things. Colon was thinking he could use a refill, but that fat Klatchian fellow at the bar was still distracting the barmaid.

“So Fred,” Nobby broke the silence, “what do you suppose all that was about, then, eh?”

Colon shook his head. He knew how to cope with this. “Didn’t happen,” he said firmly.

There was absolutely no evidence in the city that anything at all had gone amiss. All damage had been restored. The Ankh was once more flowing acid green and chunky, the rats had all come back to their gutters, the thick patina of smog and schmutz had returned to every window. No change. It might as well have all been a dream.

“But what about—”

“Nope.”

“But I heard—”

“You see, Nobby,” Colon said, with all the wisdom of his advanced years, “sometimes wizards do things that don’t make any bleeding sense, see? Letting in eldritch horrors and ending the world and spontaneously generating meat pies and so on. Just in their wizard nature. So the best thing for the rest of us normal folk is to just ignore it and hope it doesn’t happen again.”

Nobby slurped his ale and wiped his mouth on his ragged sleeve, magically returned to its former state of filth. Sounded fair to him. “Where do you think the Patrician was all that time, though?”

“No idea, Nobby. No idea.”

*

“So I understand there was quite the fuss while I was away in the country!” Lady Sybil Ramkin smiled, passing Lord Havelock Vetinari the cream and sugar for his tea.

He didn’t add either, but the offer was appreciated. “So I understand,” he agreed.

“However did you manage?” she asked, gently shoving a dragon’s snuffling snout away so it would stop begging at the table.

Vetinari paused. His memory had been giving him some trouble these past few weeks. “To be entirely honest, I’m not sure.”

Sybil blinked at him politely. “Not sure?” There was a fly buzzing a few inches to the left of her wig. Vetinari found he could not stop staring at it.

“Havelock?” she prompted him, starting to look concerned.

“I think I must have been unwell,” Vetinari finally admitted. “Perhaps a fever of some sort. I had the strangest dream…”

~

**Author's Note:**

> I do not apologize for the names "Nicholas Filch" or "Redd Shirt."


End file.
